09 November, 2011

I do my best not to give Andrew Bolt any more oxygen than he already has, but his love letter to Alan Joyce today reveals a stunning lack of awareness even for Bolt.

“But there’s one other stereotype Joyce smashed. This tough, cool union-buster is also gay, sharing his life with a New Zealand man.

What a fine challenge to the notion of gays as effete, flighty and soft - a straitjacketing that limited the media careers of gay friends, keener to talk politics than showbiz”

Leaving aside the fact that this patronising comment is just as insulting to gays as the stereotypes he mentions, has Bolt considered the possibility that Joyce is choosing to identify as gay in order to get preferential treatment?

“And, again, what a rejection of the role Labor wrote for Joyce as a Liberal zealot, conspiring with Tony Abbott”

Really? How does that work? Did Bolt just admit that being gay is incompatible with being a Liberal zealot and/or conspiring with Tony Abbott?

“Stupid stereotypes. How they kill our possibilities. How they dull our reason”

You can make your own joke about the irony of this coming from a man who writes about people who are too white to be aboriginal and continues to do so in a plausibly deniable fashion. Stereotypes dull our reason do they, Andrew? When did you figure this out?

We can see what Bolt is up to here. He’s preparing to make criticism of Joyce look like homophobia. He wants to protect Joyce from… well, people like him. I didn’t know Joyce was gay until this morning and I don’t care. It’s irrelevant. It makes no difference to the way I see him. I don’t care which way you swing. If you’re a decent person, then you’re a decent person and if you’re a prat, then you’re a prat.

The stereotypes that Bolt decries (for once!) reveal more about himself than anyone else.
Keep tearing at those straw men Andrew! Pretty soon, another one will fall down and crush you. Again.

It's like a self-fulfilling cycle of scripted vomit .. start by stereotyping gays as flighty and effete .. except for this one 'union busting' good guy (he's gay, but he's not 'that' type of gay) and then end by saying stereotyping is bad .. and presto, you have an article that's low brow enough to run in Australia's fish-wrap newspapers.

I wonder how kindly Mr Joyce has taken to being outed? And by Andrew Bolt, homophobe with form, making out as if he doesn't have an issue with it! And if it's not an issue at all, why bring it up given that it wasn't in the public arena? I didn't even know he was gay, which is quite an achievement given the nature of the gay grapevine, normally you'd only refer to someone's sexuality in their defence if public statements had been made that were critical of them related to their sexuality.

My understanding is that the topic of his sexuality was discussed in a profile on him in a Sydney publication last weekend, possibly aimed at softening his image. Never let Andrew Bolt be accused of actually breaking a story.

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